BACKGROUND (1939-1941)

Birmingham, or at least its inner-city areas, suffered grievously under the Luftwaffe bomber attacks of the Birmingham Blitz which lasted mainly from the autumn of 1940, through the winter and into the spring of 1941.  Many children from those areas were evacuated at the outbreak of war in September 1939 to places where the risk of attack was much reduced. When the predicted onslaught did not happen, many drifted back home until, almost exactly a year after the first, a second evacuation took place in September 1940 by which time the dangers of life in those areas had become all too clear.

We lived on the north-eastern fringe of the city, away from the more industrialised and densely populated areas which were most at risk, and so I was not part of the 1939 or 1940 evacuations of children from Birmingham. (In fact I had never even heard of the term "evacuees" until the summer of 1941 when I was five-and-a-bit). There was some consideration given to an offer from an American friend of my father of a U.S. home "for the duration" for my sister and me, in order to escape not only the bombing but a possible invasion and occupation; but my parents eventually declined it - perhaps the risks of a Transatlantic crossing or the pain of separation loomed too large for them - and the decision was that we should stick it out together, for better or for worse.


THE EVACUEES (1941)

By the summer of 1941 when Hitler’s attentions were focused firmly to the East and we were no longer alone, intensive aerial bombardment of the country and the risk of invasion had both reduced, at least temporarily. My father decided that we should try to get a holiday. Since the mid-1930s, and before I was born, the family had stayed every summer at a farm in the South Hams of Devonshire, an area between Torbay and Plymouth, at that time remote and sleepy and little changed in the previous hundred years.

 

So off there my mother, sister and I went, to be joined a few days later by my father and elder brother, abandoning their work and Home Guard responsibilities for a short while in favour of the attractions of rest, fresh air and unrationed food. As a five-year-old I recall their exhausted arrival late at night in the farm's hallway as they stood blinking in the lamplight after their walk with their luggage in pitch blackness from Kingsbridge Station all the way to Keynedon Mill, near Sherford. How lucky we all were to have a holiday at that time.

We were not the only guests at Keynedon Mill on this visit. There were three boys there too, unexpectedly. Bob was probably a year or so older than I; he had an elder brother of 10 or 11 whose name I can’t remember and so I shall call him Billy; and the head of this family was the eldest, named I think Frank, a remote, grown-up fellow of 15 or 16 whom one saw only rarely. I was told that they came from a part of Birmingham called Ladywood and had been sent here to avoid the bombing. I hadn’t heard of that place before but I was struck by what a nice name it was and had visions of dense foliage and grassy, sunlit clearings occupied by ladies in pretty dresses having a picnic.  The boys lived in a large, white-washed single room at Keynedon, the loft either of the main house or of one of the outbuildings. They ate with the farmer’s family, at a large table in the entrance hall of the farmhouse. I still have a vision of them sitting there as we passed through to our own room. The meal was presided over by the commanding presence of Mrs. Cummings, a lady of great antiquity - possibly in her late forties - and with a frightening cane lying ready to hand; this was of sufficient length to reach the younger boys seated further down the table in case they required any guidance.

I imagine that Bob and Billy attended the local school in the nearby tiny village of Sherford but it was August and so they were on holiday. Frank on the other hand seemed to be engaged the whole time on farm duties and I know that he got up at some ungodly hour every morning to fetch the cattle for milking. I didn’t see much of Billy and can’t say whether he had his own list of duties but I played a lot with Bob who seemed to have plenty of freedom.

In later years I have often pondered on the mystery of how those three lads ended up in such a remote spot, so far from home. I don’t know whether they were part of the September 1939 evacuation although they probably were. It seemed strange that they were sent such a long way from home from where their parents – assuming they had any – would have found it almost impossible to visit them. And when the threat of invasion loomed from the middle of 1940, lodgings only a mile or two from the South Coast, even so far west, would not have seemed to be the safest of locations. I can imagine them being shepherded on to a train at Snow Hill Station in Birmingham, labeled and carrying a small package of their possessions and of course their gas mask, as they embarked on the day-long journey into the complete unknown with the help of the Great Western Railway. Memoirs of children in this situation, some of whom had never been out of their cities or on a train before, speak of the wonders of the journey. And so I imagine our trio, gazing out of the window at an ever-changing tableau of meadow and woodland, cornfields and unfamiliar farm animals as they trundled south. In their compartment excitement and wonder at the unfamiliar sights must have been intense but later, as the day progressed and tiredness started to overcome them, that would have been replaced by apprehension and even fear about what faced them. They would have passed through Bristol and Exeter, perhaps changing trains, perhaps seeing, every now and again, many of their companions leaving the train at intermediate stops. Finally they would have alighted at South Brent and clambered aboard a little two-coach train for the last leg of their long journey. A diminutive GWR tank engine would have hauled them down the branch line through the rolling countryside of pastures and red Devonshire earth, where the hedgerows and line-side trees would have seemed close enough to lean out and touch. Quite soon they would have reached their destination, and the very last station, Kingsbridge. What an alien world it must have seemed as they got off the train and looked around them, at milk churns and empty cattle pens, the end of a line which stretched all the way back to the bustle and soot of Snow Hill and the middle of Birmingham. And yet they still had another four or five miles to go, almost certainly this time by horse and cart in the gathering dusk, through small villages and finally turning off the road at Frogmore down a lane just wide enough to allow their passing.

Nor do I know how long they stopped at Keynedon. Early in 1944 the farm and the surrounding area was itself evacuated at short notice when the US Army took over the nearby stretch of coast and adjacent countryside as a training ground for the landings on Utah beach. The Cummings family moved with all their livestock into tiny premises in Frogmore. They were still there in August 1945 when we visited them. But the boys weren’t and of course I wasn’t interested enough to ask after them. I have often wondered what happened to them and how much their time in Devon, with all its fresh air and healthy food but remoteness from loved ones and familiar city surroundings, affected their later life. And just how that clash of totally different cultures, inner city industrial Birmingham and remote, agricultural Devon worked, day in, day out.

My friendship with Bob came to an abrupt and unhappy end. The facilities in the farmhouse were basic in the extreme – candles and oil lamps; an outside pump for water and, inside, ewers and china gesunders in place of any plumbing; and the main - or so it seemed - lavatory a fruity, fly-blown, wooden structure containing an earth closet and sheets of newspaper. The latter was conveniently located out of the front door, along the lane a few yards, up some steps cut into the earth bank and across a short stretch of grass to near the waterwheel - itself a dark and forbidding structure, now unused and resting stationary in a large, threatening strip of dark water, far below. I was strictly prohibited from going anywhere near the latter because of the obvious dangers of falling over the edge; and, equally, from approaching, let alone entering, the wooden closet. There the threat was more mysterious, more veiled, "Diphtheria” being muttered as it always was when anything vaguely unhealthy was being discussed. Bob and I were playing near the waterwheel one day, feeding ducks with white berries plucked from a nearby bush. Getting bored with this, although the ducks weren’t, we decided to investigate the little house. And not only that, but to leave our visiting card there too. All of this was of course great fun. But somehow or other the incident came to the notice of my parents and, probably with a bit of assistance from me, Bob got the blame for initiating this crime. It must have been decided that he was not a suitable companion for me and I never played with him again. Nor after our departure a few days later ever heard anything further about him.

I never even knew Bob's family name. I hope that he had a good life and that he always remembered, as I still do, a sunny day in the South Hams of Devon more than 80 years ago, a flock of greedy white ducks and a smelly old hut on the edge of a meadow by a waterwheel. And a friendly playmate to enjoy it all with.

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FOOTNOTE - September 2024 How good it would be to identify this young group, so far from their home and family and friends! What were their circumstances in that inner area of a vast, industrialised city? And how did their lives work out there, after their return home? Modern methods of research would probably tell us - but not without knowledge of their surname and perhaps exact location.......and could any local Devon history records - or local knowledge - ever provide us with that?

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Please see INDEX page for general acknowledgements.

This family and local history page is hosted by www.staffshomeguard.co.uk 
(The Home Guard of Great Britain, 1940-1944)
All text and images are, unless otherwise stated, © The Myers Family 2024  

INDEX Home Guard of Great Britain website

INDEX Streetly and Family Memories 1936-61